My favorite anime studio is worth a great deal to me, not because I want to own it, but because of how great my appreciation for the work they've produced.

The two reasons I can think of why most anime fans would want to own a studio: Have the their own pet projects produced, or have some sort of creative input into its shows; neither of which really appeals to me. I'm self-aware enough to know that if I owned an anime studio I'd probably only be a hindrance to getting any work done because I'd monopolize all the animators' time with an endless barrage of conversation. Although, it would be nice to steer an anime studio away from otaku-pandering projects and focus more on testing the expressive limits of animation.

Back in '01-'02, before the Mexican broadcasting chain Univisión bought out channel 11 in Puerto Rico, I recall having seen a single episode of an animated adaptation of Zorro, dubbed in Spanish! I never knew if it was an anime or not, and my attempts at locating it in the ANN Encyclopedia were fruitless, but it's good to know that it was a real thing!

Puerto Rico also used to air Spanish-dubbed episodes of Ranma 1/2, Dragon Ball, and Sailor Moon up until the early '00s. These days, there just isn't any children's television, save for canned programming blocks courtesy of Univisión--dubbed episodes of Pinky Dinky Doo and Dora the Explorer (which is horrendous: Dora is fluent in both English and Spanish in the English track, but her Spanish dub actress is barely understandable in English.) Oh, and we get Spanish-dubbed episodes of Beakman. I bet they pay for those with someone's Burger King money.

In a weird way, I miss that old Zorro show. I was only able to watch that one episode. Ah, well, at least I now know it wasn't a fever-dream.

Didn't Takeshi Shudo die in 2010? I figured the 3rd Minky Momo series didn't come about because they didn't have his input and/or his family's permission or something.
That and I assumed the "Mirror Momo" stage musical was supposed to be the "3rd series" I have no idea how popular it was though.

Not a huge fan of Sweet Mint and Mary Bell tbh, but I love Idol Densetsu Eriko from Ashi/Reed

(No, I'm not in any way a lolicon. This OVA's just really, really good. There's other great Momo stuff but if you watch one bit of the franchise then Bridge Over Dreams is what gets my highest recommendation.)

Last edited by DrizzlingEnthalpy on Sun Nov 03, 2013 3:44 pm; edited 1 time in total

That Turtles OVA was just really stupid. I'm glad it never came here. Even spoiler[Shredder turning into a giant dragon] couldn't save how dumb it ultimately ended up being.

So is Minky Momo the first magical girl anime where it had an ending like that and paved the way for the genre to have "dark" or "mature" twists? (I say both words in quotes because the terms are too broad now.) Personally I'm curious to learn about as many classical magical girl shows as possible.

I have to admit, I don't always read these articles (just when it concerns something that interests me), but I'm always really happy with the way they're written when I do check them out. so good on ya Mike. *thumbs up*

The TMNT OVA is certainly an amusing little footnote in the franchise's history. I'd agree with you too that, as bizarre as it is in places (like Shredder's random new design), it actually fits really well with the OT tone-wise at least. The humor feels right at home with what they did back in that series. The only things I really hate is the shoehorned in transformations, and...Krang's voice. And the fact that they know how painful it is by making a gag of it. Gaaah.

It's worth mentioning too though that, despite it not ever coming over to the states, both OVAs are apparently well known enough to warrant cameos in 'Turtles Forever', as seen here (kind of in the middle, best picture I could find) and here. That's saying something when they don't even give a nod to Next Mutation...though maybe that says more about Next Mutation.

So is Minky Momo the first magical girl anime where it had an ending like that and paved the way for the genre to have "dark" or "mature" twists? (I say both words in quotes because the terms are too broad now.) Personally I'm curious to learn about as many classical magical girl shows as possible.

not really, I mean Mahou no Mako-chan (1970) had some very over-dramatic scenes (I mean, her magic murders some criminals right in the second episode), Fushigi na Melmo (1971) her whole magical pills comes from the ghost of her dead mother who dies on-screen. Mahou Tsukai Chappy, Cutey Honey and Majokko Megu went to some dark places too too. I'm sure Sally and Akko-chan had a dark episode or two (but I haven't seen them the whole way through, so I can't really speak for them)

So while Minky Momo is the first to have the main character literally die (then get reborn of course) its not really the first to explore dark times. 70s kids anime in general seemed to have a more "better they learn the facts of life now" attitude (here's lookin at you Hutch the Honeybee)

It seems as far as those go, the ones posted above are indeed all there is so far. There's four listed total, but the other two (also found on YouTube) are the same shorts with narration instead of the theme song.

But it isn't as if Minky Momo's older fans had nothing to latch on to. The show's animation was quite good for TV, anchored by Toyo Ashida's character designs. Hey, didn't Toyo Ashida also do some of the character designs for his own Fist of the North Star TV adaptation…? HEY, WAIT A MINUTE

That's nothing. Momo herself appears in episode 38:

On the left, unnamed girl in the post-nuclear apocalypse. On the right, Minky Momo.

As far as I can tell the last line in the Mask opening is "Fly Away", because the bike turns into a helicopter. The rest of those lines fit what is happening on-screen so I would assume that it would have to do with flying.

If I had the money to make corporate anime purchases, the first thing I'd do would be to license Minky Momo and release it on Blu-ray. Beyond that, Gainax barely exists any more, so there'd be no real point buying it.

I've seen what I estimate is all of it that can be found English-subtitled of Minky Momo. It's a great, fun show, and La ronde in my dream is a lovely, elegant OVA. Thank you for the section on it; I enjoyed reading it.

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